Topic 10. Types of Housing in Great Britain

1. There are many different types of housing in Britain. The most popular one is a semi-detached house, often called the home of “Mr. and Mrs. Average”. These houses share a central wall. Typically a semi has a small garden and a fence divides a larger garden at the back. Inside the house there are usually three bedrooms, a lounge, a kitchen and a small bathroom. They also have a loft and a basement, rather convenient to keep various tools and instruments. Towns in Britain have areas which contain streets and streets of semis, often with well-kept gardens.

2. People who want to have more privacy and who can afford it prefer living in a detached house. It stands by itself and it has land all round it. More and more homes are detached, although in areas where building land is expensive, the houses may be closer to each other. Most detached houses are to be found in the suburbs, in the “green belt” or in the “commuter belt”.

3. Living in a detached house or in a semi gives their dwellers much opportunity of individual self-expression. People like to choose the colour of their own front door and window frames, and also to choose what they are going to do with the outside territory. The front garden offers endless possibilities of displaying individuality. Some of them are paved, some are full of flower-beds with paths between them, others are just patches of grass or green lawns with some trees or bushes on them.

4. Many elderly people dream of going to live in a bungalow when they retire. It is a type of house where all the rooms are on the ground floor and so there are no stairs to climb.

5. Most city dwellers usually live in terraced houses or in blocks of flats. Terraced houses are attached to each other in a long row. They usually have three or four stories. They can be anything up to 150 years old, so in recent years many of them have been renovated: central heating has been added and other improvements have been made. A block of flats is a large building divided into separate parts (especially flats or offices). Flats are not popular just because they do not give enough privacy; long corridors in tower blocks often encourage crime and vandalism. In recent years local councils have tried to improve the areas around blocks of flats by creating “green space”, children's playgrounds and the facilities for the community to use: shops, markets, schools, kindergartens, swimming-pools, libraries etc.

6. Today many people who work in the cities buy country cottages. They are stone buildings which once were part of a farm built on the country estate of wealthy landowners. Some country cottages are very old and they may have a thatched or tiled roof.

7. Whatever type of housing the Englishman chooses, the important thing is to feel cosy – that is, which seems warm even if it is not really warm. This abstract idea of “home” is more important than the building.

8. The well-known saying “The Englishman's home is his castle” illustrates the desire for privacy and the British attitude to housing.

Topic 11. Mass Media – News and Views.

British Mass Media

The BBC

Just as the British Parliament has the reputation for being “the mother of parliaments”, so the BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation) might be said to be “the mother of information services”, providing both information and entertainment.

The BBC has often shown itself to be rather proud of its impartiality, objectivity and independence.

It is much the result of its legal status – it depends neither on advertising nor directly on the government for its income. It gets this from the licence fee which everybody who uses a television set has to pay. However, the government decides how much this fee is going to be, appoints the BBC’s board of governors and its director general, has the right to veto any BBC programme.